


Someone left someone at the edge of reason

by Alias (anafabula)



Category: Cultist Simulator (Video Game)
Genre: (Neville is cis), Ambient Sadism, Anal Fingering, And yet, Ascension: Enlightenment, Banned Together Bingo 2020, Canon-Typical Cults, Chair Bondage, Church of the Holy Wound, Clothed Sex, Dacryphilia, Despair Kink, Emotional Manipulation, Fictional Religion & Theology, First Time, I would call this use of a prisoner canon-atypical but then again the Red Grail exists, In that the narrator is gay for the Watchman and their gender is otherwise textually uncertain, Inappropriate Use of the Elagabaline Manacle, Knock is the principle which opens and is opened, Loss of Virginity, Metaphysics which makes occasional stabs toward being pornography, Oral Fingering, Other, PIV Sex, POV First Person, Power Dynamics, Sexy Cosmic Horror, Spit As Lube, The narrator is also aggressively asexual, Transmasculine Narrator, conceptual lube., feels weird tagging that when it's almost more Knock As Lube honestly, this is happening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:34:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28929615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anafabula/pseuds/Alias
Summary: The leader of the Church of the Holy Wound decides that, lifelong disinterest in such intimacy notwithstanding, they'd like to know what all the fuss is about.Surely Neville wouldn't begrudge them the additional line of inquiry, with how much he's slated to show them already and how soon; it hardly seems that greater an additional demand, and they've watched him want, before.
Relationships: Aspirant (Cultist Simulator)/Neville (Cultist Simulator), Aspirant/The Door-in-the-Eye (one-sided)
Kudos: 3





	Someone left someone at the edge of reason

**Author's Note:**

> Fills “`Inaccurate Religious Figure`”.
> 
> Fic also known as “ _*points at cult leader* this absolutely fucks_ ”.
> 
> (Profoundly vague language for anatomy used throughout, no particular warnings needed save for the potential obtuseness. It seemed like the right character choice, though.)

I find myself of two minds with regard to what I’ve determined in my pursuit of human conversation. Perhaps I’d hoped, or at least expected, to find that people under great pressure must express some unique core. But to maintain that expectation would evince at best, by now, an irrelevant sort of naïveté; and there are pleasures of their own to be found in consistency. 

Failing some unforeseen black swan among my interlocutors, I’ve come to expect that, once the truth sinks in, they always scream. And later, in enough time, they always stop.

Still, in a way, I find myself surprised to find this time it’s still the same; it’s hard to have expected such a spirit of self-defense from Neville, sustained at length before he finally subsided into more easily-anticipated crying. It leaves each sob I can hear underlined slightly by the prospect of knowing he’s capable of turning such feeling outward after all, even if – for the time being – he subsequently gave it up. 

Likely best to keep such surprise to myself. It won’t matter for long, and then it won’t matter at all, and I’m unlikely to find my levity shared by any other.

I know, of course, how my followers look at me; it would behoove me to know even if I weren’t otherwise given to. With fear, more and more now, not so much tempering their reverence as whetting it, refining its edge. And interest, in varying particular forms: envy, longing, a desire to understand.

Love, perhaps, such as they believe it to be, with all the necessary cracks of inaccuracy such a one-sided conviction should entail. I would do nothing to encourage it, of course; even before the issue of distraction, it would be manifestly inappropriate.

But a lack of encouragement toward consummation on my part hardly translates to some right to hold such secrets.

I have been mulling the question over accordingly, inside and around my other considerations, as that hunger so much greater than curiosity or even boredom swells once more inside me. I have never understood that style of wanting. I think, some time ago, I was content in expecting to never understand it.

I would very much like to know, now. 

I would like to know everything. 

* * *

I rarely need light where I walk, at this point, save to inflict upon another. Alone and for my own purposes I see well enough. My step is light as well, lighter even by the day, though in the other sense of the word. 

Still: I’m hardly concerned that I’ll wake someone by walking the hallways, at night. They’d hardly have the right to object even if I did — but the lack of subtlety might startle, in the near-dark. These are things I do still try to find subtlety in, when I can. And regardless of how they would lack any standing to question me, I would in the end prefer not to justify why I’m awake in the middle of the night, not near my own rooms nor the library, carrying manacles that could rightfully belong in a museum. 

The chill metal swallows the sounds that might come from me holding it, even carefully so; the sound of chain on chain; the bare whisper of my steps. It would leach the warmth from the lights in the hall, if that were relevant. It changes nothing about my own bare hands.

He is awake when I come to him. I expected nothing less. Even if he’d drowsed when he should’ve known to wait for me – understandable enough – he’s hardly in a position, be it physical or mental, to rest comfortably here. What matters is that he looks alert when the door eases open, scant light from outside casting his face into unnecessarily clear relief: eyes bright and wide and fixed on me like a miracle. What matters is that he’s happy to see me, and it brings him to his feet and towards me like the tide, but I catch his hands and bring him back as if dancing, even as he tries to frame his hope in words – it hardly occurs to me to anticipate being misunderstood before it happens, of course, but then again it hardly occurs to him to resist as I walk him back where he belongs. 

I have him seated again by the time Neville’s managing to ask what’s happening, the door falling shut behind me but not necessarily liable to muffle how shrill he’s likely to get with answers – not yet, but only because he’s currently only as loud as confusion, and that’s not exactly quiet – and I could tell him to be silent but I suppose he’s earned the outlet, when I already took care to have alternatives. And I may be inhumanly fragile but I’m stronger than he is in will and body, even if he knew what to expect from me – even if he could seemingly bring himself to think through what to expect from me. 

I get his arms fixed behind him at an unforgiving angle with only some awkwardness of reach on my own part, and the grip of Winter on his wrists almost joins itself at the opportunity to do what it was made to do. I know consciously that I’m shackling his wrists by hand, the practice with the artifact at this point rendering the risk of my own fingers going numb and still by proxy negligible – I am so much more than that; he is not – but it feels more than anything like the Elagabaline Manacle jumps from my hands to his wrists, locks itself, ties him down itself.

He’s stilled very quickly, at any rate, regardless of the autonomy of how.

His mouth opens and closes in turn, in incomprehension, as he realizes what I’ve done. Now, twisting within his range of motion – such as it is – less and less, he is tense with fear when he looks at me, the light just barely enough to catch me by, but relaxing in turns under my hands. It makes him hesitant and obliging (though a great many things are prone to do), with the edge to it choked off into silence by the binding of his hands. 

I touch my lips to his temple, standing by his side, gauging angles. He’s opening and closing his mouth still; I wonder if he’d mean to shout or beg or whisper. It hardly takes second-guessing to trace his lips with two fingers when they’re moving – the dry pad of my fingertips and the bitten softness of his lips a more friction-prone contrast than I might have expected – and before he quite interprets that as bidding him to silence I hook them past his lower lip and pull his mouth open for my examination instead.

He’s soft here as well but strangely so – yielding, smooth everywhere but the tongue, wet and then wetter as saliva pools in his mouth and I feel around to my liking. By the time I’m satisfied with that first point of understanding, my fingers are wet to the base and his lips are slick and shining to rival his eyes. It is easy to bare him as much as is going to be relevant next, even with only my off hand to do it, and he keeps the motion of true objection in his mouth. Even lifts his hips slightly whenever I’d need him to, staring at me in incomprehension but with the tangible hope, off and on, that I have a plan that includes him in a way that he’d want to be included, trust rendering his mind blank from moment to moment. 

The silence swallows what sound he’d make when I lean over him to brace one arm at the other side of his thigh and press one finger, wet as I’m liable to manage here, against his hole. Not without some trial and error first; but the heat of him, the resistance, the absolute vulnerability of his body – it seems impossible that I should be able to breach him, and then it’s trivial instead, one finger slipping in with such ease as to be meaningless. 

Better make it two, then, when I realize how much I won’t know from only one at just a single joint of progress in; I am hardly known for my patience, after all, and in a way it’s all so inevitable. 

He’s easy for me regardless, always, body opening just barely enough to fit anything I’d ask of him – of course – but not the slightest bit more, taking me with an almost greedy tightness as I ease into him with all the gentleness my own ever-urgent fascination will still allow. It steals my breath away with the unfamiliarity as I try to catalog every possible sensation at once, the smooth texture and overwhelming heat of him, the resistance when I move this way and that and the inevitability of allowing me to do as I please. 

I tear my gaze away from my own hand to keep a better watch on his reactions, the way his breathing speeds up and is visibly uneven, every twitch and blink – hunting for more obvious physical response as I realize once again that I’ve willingly thrown away the prospect of knowing what he’d _sound_ like, all the more reason to comprehend the rest of him exhaustively instead. He’s overtaken by a kind of visibly numinous terror, anxiety transfigured into something better, this continuous failure to know what I want as twisted between the twin conflicts of fear and the desire to please me regardless. 

He _does_ please me, currently, though I suppose he’s not particularly willing on the subject save for the obliging overall stillness. I feel like my fingers together are like nothing so much as a lockpick, feeling out the parameters of a space they just barely fit inside; coaxing open anything that moves, as I discover there’s an angle where his shoulders go rigid and he seems to still-drily sob – as I look down and realize, to my distinct pleasure, that as if by some transitive property he’s rapidly getting hard. I watch that transformation with great interest, exploratory movement growing methodical as my priorities shift.

I pull my hand from him, reluctantly – almost with difficulty, but the relief of that angle freeing my wrist and the impatience of feeling I’ve seen enough makes it necessary – and take a moment to evaluate. His focus on me is complete when I’m still, the rapid rise and fall of his chest almost seismic, but when I run my clean palm across the head of his visibly straining prick – it’s a bit sticky, which I should probably have expected, but the skin beneath is fine and soft-over-hard, flushed hot with blood and holding my interest in an entirely satisfactory manner – when I touch him there, he folds forward as if I’d hit him, gaze desperately distant and spine bowing forward. (And before I’ve pulled away, then, I feel – distinct from the other movement, I’m sure of it – such a curious thing as his cock seems to jump against the lightness of my hand. I didn’t know they could do that. I wonder vaguely if I can make him do it again.)

It’s just as well I end up giving him a moment to recover, I suppose, though it hardly seems to calm him in practice. I don’t strip myself more than absolutely necessary; even this much is bizarre to me, the additional soft light sources and the ways the angles of my body work against the laws of man when I don’t have clothes to mediate the matter for me. Also bizarre is the sense of gnawing, hungry _warmth_ , simultaneously alike and entirely unlike more usual curiosity, throwing me off balance, shifting my center of gravity. When I straddle his lap — and he looks at me, as I do, like I’m a miracle or a stranger, all wild eyes and somehow still surprised — it’s almost ungainly, such that I have to set my arms on his shoulders for balance before I’m sure of my positioning. At least he’s not in any state to judge on the subject. 

And it’s easy, easier than I would think by rights it ought to be, more a matter of positioning than anything else — the angles escape me, until they don’t; it’s just as well he’s not helping by any means other than being there — but _oh,_ it’s devastatingly simple when I do manage it at last, the teasing of blood-hot blunt pressure resolving into my being opened, gradually but undeniably so. And if my own hand is a lockpick this, then, is a key, appropriately enough; it’s so alike in meaning and yet dissimilar in form to anything I’ve ever felt before. 

I can feel the way the muscles of his thighs strain not to move, where our legs touch, and I approve greatly of the effort as I rock against him, testing — shallow, at first, and slow. Learning the shape of his body, here, and the sensation of another body inside my own. The second is not unfamiliar to me, fundamentally, but learning by reading or by considered speech is less measurable and altogether higher, and it’s cold and often formless to dream. This is warm, richly so — almost too warm, with what remains of me alongside him in such a tiny space, air compressing with human heat, human breath. (Even for the pittance mine could qualify as such; he can make up for it.) If anything it’s an incomparable anchor to what I haven’t lost yet, how there is more held within the rough shape of my skin than glass and color and light that still can open so. 

He is trembling under me, shuddering, racked with sobs that make no sound; hard and hot and deeply satisfying within me as I grow surer of my movement, and he grows certain of what I intend. He has so very many tears left inside him after all, face upturned and glimmering in the light of my eyes and my teeth, and I don’t fight the impulse to kiss his cheeks, his eyelids, close-mouthed and over and over again, learning that delicate skin with my lips, how even that salt now strikes me as sweet. He mouths words into that cold silence; pleas, I know, though I wonder if he’s an idea left what he is begging for.

There is one thing, I think, which I have yet to do, and his mouth is serendipitously open, silent and breathless and begging, when I bend myself to kiss it. 

Such a curious mix of textures, more so than it had felt on my fingers. The soft parted lips, symmetrical touch like a peculiar kind of handshake, the slick perfection of teeth that know better than to form any objection. When my tongue slips past to trace over his he shudders, tenses, and spends deep inside me at last, in a rush of impossibly more intense wet heat and a co-equal rush of desperate, perfect despair.

I find then I have to break away to gasp into his mouth instead of more sophisticated things. But I feel the way his breath stutters with pain at how tightly I endeavor to hold on to him, to the scant physical details I have not yet taken note of, even as my hips still.

I am satisfied, I think, in what I have set out to know, and I tell him this, as I remove myself and set us both to rights. I would not want him believing that he’d failed me in this, that he would end with questions unopened. And the praise, more than anything, I think — knowing that he did still serve — keeps him almost as quiet as he has been even when I take the manacles off. Although his voice is hoarse and wounded, so perhaps he has little choice in it.

A slice of light from the hallway, freed from its own dim context, bisects his face when I open the door and turn back to him. I look at him in it, and he looks at me — backlit, with almost perfect clarity, still only almost — and his mouth begins to move, as if to speak.

I preempt him; but softly, softly; he’s more than earned that from me. 

Softly I say, “We will speak again, very soon.” And softly, as I watch, that last hope dies in his face.

* * *

Neville is weeping, and I am satisfied. At least in this. My footfall light as ever, regardless of this sense of being present in the remainder of my body. I will not understand why others may dedicate themselves to pursuing those feelings, no, but I have gained my comprehension of the benefits they expect for their troubles. 

My lips still tingle, and I find myself pleasantly aware of my own mortal blood. But, on the measure of things, I still prefer my conversations. 

* * *

In the end, without any surprises, I settled that single curiosity but it _sates_ me to return and truly know him, to leave nothing behind when I close that secret door a second time. I know nothing else can truly satisfy me, of course, even for these brief moments. Nothing else can make me full and whole and then bright with renewed awareness of what heights I’ve yet to reach; not before I can truly see the Watchman in His travels, before I can consummate His Marks on me outside of merely knowing them. 

Nothing is enough, not now, not in this universe; but this, at least, in and of itself, is good.

I made sure Neville understood his purpose, before the end; what last door I asked him to hold for me, to open himself into the potential of. I could tolerate him knowing nothing less. And he was good for me, too, there in almost-utter darkness with the quiet and the bright.

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone: Neville's the one people want to protect and do a minimum of bad things to  
> Alias: So you're saying there's food? You're saying everyone's agreed on who's food. Yes?
> 
> Anyway, something something `perpetual hunger for comments` something something `eldritch glee`.  
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
